Flying Muffins, City Cycling & Getting a Tattoo: Jeremy Vine meets Mr Motivator

What happens when the person who never gives an inch finally runs out of road?

In this episode of On Your Bike, Mr Motivator is joined by broadcaster, author and committed London cyclist Jeremy Vine for a ride through the middle of the capital and a conversation that travels a long way from cycle lanes. Turning 60, writing books at half four in the morning, burnout, grief, and a shared tattoo with his teenage daughter. It is all in there…

On Your Bike with Jeremy Vine: Cycling, Burnout and Life at 60

Scared at trying a bike “much better” than his two wheels, a deal is struck. Jeremy keeps his bike, Mr Motivator takes the trusty and convenient  VOLT Burlington, and off they go into (and beyond) the traffic. 

A Flying Machine Powered by Muffins

Two minutes riding around central London, one of the busiest cities in the world, Jeremy makes the point he has clearly made many times before.

“Neither of us has died. Why are people worried?”

His theory on what really keeps people off bikes is not fear, but habit. Four wheels became the default, and the effort of two wheels started to look optional. He rides in the middle of the lane, takes his primary position without apology, and does his best to ignore angry drivers.

He also shares the best definition of a bicycle we have heard on this series, one he attributes to a member of the House of Lords.

“A bicycle is a flying machine powered by muffins, and if you have a bicycle you can eat anything you want.”

A £400 Visit to the Jacuzzi

Jeremy did not come to cycling as a lifelong athlete. He came to it in his forties, unfit and, in his own words, getting miserable and fat.

So he joined a gym. Over the course of a year, he went once and used the jacuzzi.

“So using the jacuzzi cost me £400. I thought, I’ve got to do something else for my £400.”

He left the gym, bought a bicycle, and felt better about life almost immediately. Now the bike does several jobs at once. It gets him to work, it keeps him fit, and it looks after his head, because he listens to audiobooks the whole way.

There is a lovely aside on joggers, too. Jeremy told a physiotherapist that his knees hurt every time he went jogging. She told him to stop jogging. He describes it as brilliant advice, and his knees have been fine ever since.

“If You’re Not Present, You Will Die”

Mr Motivator asks whether cycling lets him escape into another world. Jeremy says the opposite is true, noting… 

“You have to be fully present. Because if you’re not present, you will die.”

He remembers a filthy evening in Kensington, dodging traffic, when he said to the cyclist next to him that it was a bad one tonight. The reply stuck with him: yes, but we love it, don’t we?

“It’s like a video game where you’ve only got one life.”

For a man whose brain runs at full tilt from half four in the morning, half an hour a day of enforced total attention is not a small thing.

The Lazy Man Posing as a Workaholic

The routine is genuinely startling. Jeremy is up at 4.30am and goes straight to the basement to write 400 words of his next whodunnit before the day begins. The first was a bestseller, so now he is committed. Then a morning television show at ITN, then across to the BBC for his radio programme, then whatever the afternoon holds.

But he pushes back hard on the idea that this is discipline.

“I’m a very, very lazy person posing as a workaholic. If I was left to my own devices, I would literally sit in a chair all day.”

He is also honest about what drives it: being bullied at school, and a need to prove something to people who, as he notes, are all dead now. Add a generation of broadcasters who have priced in the day someone says it is not working any more, and you get a man who builds himself pillow after pillow, just in case.

Burnout, and the Curse of the Strong

In his forties, with five jobs at the BBC, two young children and what he calls the hunter-gatherer switch flicked on, Jeremy hit burnout properly.

“I just couldn’t sleep. I was crying. I couldn’t enjoy anything.”

It took five or six years to come out the other side, and he never took a day off. He knew he was better, he says, when he went on Strictly and suddenly felt in full colour again, with colour in his cheeks and the ability to smell the leaves.

The book he recommends is Depressive Illness: The Curse of the Strong by Dr Tim Cantopher, and its central argument is one Mr Motivator has heard from guest after guest on this series.

“The people who go down are the ones who are strong, because they’re never going to give an inch.”

His advice is simple. Find some ventilation. Try to have at least one day a week where you are not chasing.

The Hardest Loss

Mr Motivator asks for the lowest point, and Jeremy is clear that it was not the burnout, and not the end of his first marriage. It was losing his father seven years ago.

His dad had Parkinson’s. On the last day of his life, Jeremy chose to do an interview first and drive down to be with him overnight. He came out of the interview to a call from his brother saying their father had gone.

He describes the two of them hugging afterwards and bursting into tears at the same moment, one incredible howl of pain. And he remembers his mother watching the body being carried past and saying, quietly, that those were his hands, and she always loved his hands.

“I thought, wow, it’s like a poem.”

What he struggles with now is which memory wins. He wants to remember his father on the beach, patiently washing the sand from between the toes of a complaining four-year-old, rather than the difficult final years.

“I sort of want to get a big eraser and just rub it over that memory.”

Mr Motivator meets him there, sharing his own lowest point: the loss of his 12-year-old granddaughter to meningitis, and the helplessness of hearing his daughter scream down the phone from thousands of miles away. Fitness pulled him through, he says, and so did finally allowing himself to cry instead of being strong for everybody else.

As Jeremy puts it, grief is the price you pay for love.

The High Point: A Song, a Daughter and a Shared Tattoo

Mr Motivator refuses to leave the conversation down there, and asks for a high point. Jeremy does not choose a job, an award or a moment on air.

He noticed that his own father, much as he loved him, never asked which artist he wanted to see live. So Jeremy asked his youngest daughter, at 16, whether there was anyone she wanted to see before they died. Her answer was Billy Joel.

They got close to the stage in Hyde Park, and when New York State of Mind started, she knew every word.

“She was almost somewhere else, and I thought, oh my goodness, this is beautiful.”

When she turned 18, she asked for a tattoo of a lyric by The Smiths. It was a long lyric, so she suggested they split it. She has there are brighter sides to life. He has and I should know, because I’ve seen them. Neither half makes much sense alone, which he rather likes.

What Wellbeing Means to Jeremy

Asked to define wellbeing, Jeremy splits it neatly down the middle. Fifty percent physical, fifty percent mental. When Mr Motivator pushes him on emotions, he folds those into the mental half, and points out he has only got 100 to work with.

The physical half is unglamorous and completely convincing. Wellbeing is not having pain in your knees. It is everything working.

The mental half is about not taking any of it for granted.

“We’re so lucky to have been born when we were born, to have been loved by people, to be relatively fit and healthy, not in constant pain.”

Money gets a realistic hearing too. He does not want to be broke, but he quotes Nicole Kidman on realising that the only thing that matters is love, and Mr Motivator supplies the perfect line in reply: you never see a deposit account following a hearse. Jeremy’s own observation is that the world’s oldest people almost always have an allotment, and almost never worked in a bank.

Given a superpower, he would use it on childhood. Give every child a decent one, whatever they become as adults. He would also like buses to play the first note of a Beatles song instead of that horrible ding. Mr Motivator would prefer a reggae song, and the negotiation continues.

Quickfire: Town Over Country, Every Time

The quickfire round produces one genuinely surprising answer. Asked whether he prefers cycling in town or the country, Jeremy says town, and says it is safer.

His reasoning is hard to argue with. The average daytime speed of a car in central London is around 7.6 miles an hour. As he puts it, they are going as slow as hearses (yes, that’s two hearse references in one episode!).

Elsewhere: two wheels, road cycling, smooth tarmac, steady endurance, downhill every time, and a silent companion ride, after saying how much he had enjoyed their chat. Outdoor exercise over a home workout, even in winter, which he insists is underrated.

Radio beats television, without hesitation, because radio survived the whole internet era in the most miraculous way. He talks about working alongside Tony Blackburn and Bob Harris, and about losing Johnny Walker. And on whether he records his achievements or plays it by ear? Play it by ear, and so it continues, all the way to a London bench.

“I’m happy on this bench. This is as good as it gets.”

Watch the Full Conversation

Jeremy Vine’s episode is funny, fast and unexpectedly moving, and it lands on the same truth this series keeps finding. Movement is not just about fitness. It is about staying present, staying well, and giving yourself somewhere to put everything else.

Watch the full episode above, and find the rest of the series on the On Your Bike Podcast page. You can also catch up with Levi Roots, Rustie Lee and Shaun Wallace, and visit the Mr Motivator, Say Yeah channel.